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Amsterdam’s newcomers thrive even as immigration gets tougher

On Jan Hanzenstraat, and most everywhere in Amsterdam, two worlds bump up against each other: Muslim communities and the Dutch mainstream.

A student in a class at the El-Tawheed Mosque in Amsterdam.
(Andrew Chung / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

By Andrew ChungToronto Star

Sat., June 23, 2012

AMSTERDAM—The El Tawheed Mosque, long held as a main outpost for radical Islam in the Netherlands, sits on a slender road called Jan Hanzenstraat, directly across from a well-patronized coffee shop called Millennium. Not to be confused with a café, this coffee shop is where you can buy and smoke marijuana legally.

Mohammed Abou Zayd emerges from a class on the proper Arabic pronunciation of the Qur’an, in which the teacher and most students refused to be photographed for religious reasons.

“I think that they must feel ashamed when they walk down this street and see the mosque,” he said, motioning to the coffee shop.

The mosque’s members are warm and welcoming to visitors. Many also happen to think that women should wear burkas or niqabs, and that Muslims should not listen to music. They are Salafists, practitioners of an arch-conservative form of Islam.

Still, Zayd, 23, smiled when asked if there have ever been problems on the street. “No,” he replied. “We don’t have trouble with them. And they don’t have trouble with us.”

On Jan Hanzenstraat, and most everywhere in Amsterdam, two worlds bump up against each other: Muslim communities on the one hand, the established Dutch mainstream on the other.

In the past few years, the Dutch government, propped up by a vehemently anti-Islam party whose leader wants to ban the Qur’an, has squeezed the vise on immigrants, adopting measures to force their integration into Dutch society and making it harder for them to both arrive and to stay in Holland.

It has led to an extraordinary drop in citizenship for immigrants. The number, less than 20,000 in 2010, is about a quarter of what was in the mid-1990s.

Surveys show, meanwhile, that the Dutch people have become less tolerant overall of immigrants.

How has this affected Abou Zayd? Not much, actually. When he wants to pray at the supermarket where he works as a stock boy, he can. He does it on the loading dock. Nor is he forced to stock the shelves with alcohol, or non-Halal meat.

Amsterdam is an example of how cities can play a critical role in integration. As policies at the national level harden, Amsterdam continues to exert an openness reflected in its diverse inhabitants.

“In Holland, which went through radical change at the national level away from multiculturalism to something else — I call it civic integration — at the local level, that reorientation didn’t happen,” said Christian Joppke, an immigration expert at the University of Bern.

The city has programs to help young students in poor areas, and also promotes diversity through advertising and awareness campaigns. About 13 per cent of the police force is made up of minorities, considered high in Europe. Religious groups get airtime on TV.

And young people like Abou Zayd seem to voice optimism for the future and even their current status.

Youth unemployment in the Netherlands was the lowest in Europe in 2011, at 7.6 per cent. Education, particularly for the second generation, appears to be more accessible than elsewhere in Europe. Nearly 30 per cent of second-generation Turkish and Moroccan young people have professional college or university degrees, a Dutch study found. Islamic schools, too, are publicly funded.

Muslims in the Netherlands feel more like part of their country than do their peers in France or Sweden, studies have concluded. Eurislam, an international comparative study of Muslim integration, found that 66 per cent of those with Moroccan ethnicity in the Netherlands strongly identified as “Dutch,” compared to just 43 per cent in France who identified as French.

Amsterdam remains far less segregated than many European cities. For instance, Slotervaart, a district where many Turks and Moroccans settle, still has as many native Dutch residents as foreigners.

Ayoub Amnad, a 19-year-old son of Moroccan immigrants, said he regularly talks to native Dutch people in Slotervaart.

“Sometimes when I do something bad in the street, they tell me, ‘That’s against Islam,’” he said with a grin. “They know about Islam. And I know about Christianity. So we can talk.”

The event that hardened Dutch attitudes on immigrants was the 2004 murder of Theo van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker and critic of radical Islam. The killer, Mohammed Bouyeri, shot him, slit his throat, and pinned a threatening letter to his chest with the blade of a knife.

The national government, a shaky coalition that fell in April over austerity measures, had been pushing harsher laws for foreigners, partly to satisfy Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party. To Wilders, Islam isn’t a religion but an ideology.

Before a foreigner can stay in the Netherlands, he or she must take a test abroad. The test became harder with a new Dutch reading and comprehension element added last year, and the passing grade was raised.

Foreigners from outside of the European Union must take the civic integration test after they arrive in the Netherlands. It costs about $300 and has several sections. An oral exam in Dutch has newcomers answer questions over the telephone to a computer.

A third part of the test requires a portfolio proving immigrants can use Dutch in everyday life, such as a letter to their child’s teacher.

The University of Bern’s Joppke — a critic of multiculturalism — has called the test a “badly concealed control policy.”

The test is a principal reason why new citizenships have plummeted, according to the country’s statistics agency — as much as 75 per cent since 1996.

Amsterdam is also noticing some disturbing trends.

“What we see is that there is growing segregation, people tending to live in certain quarters and going to certain schools and certain cultural events,” said Harro Hoogerwerf, the city’s manager of education and civic integration.

“I think to a certain extent, we are in confusion as to what to do.”

But experts are still optimistic. Muslims’ participation in civic life, their identification with Dutch society, and their representation in politics are all promising. And just 2 per cent of Muslims are becoming radicalized, said Jean Tillie, who co-ordinates the Eurislam study from the University of Amsterdam.

“It’s a picture that a lot of people think is not true, or are surprised by, because of the discourse of the radical right.”

This is what Ahmed El Yamaani, editor of IslamMagazine, points to when asked whether Muslim integration is working in the Netherlands.

“If you go to the university of applied sciences, you will see how many Muslims there are.”

El Yamaani, 24, came to the Netherlands at age 9 from Yemen. He has two jobs in the computer field on top of his position at the magazine, which is published by the El Tawheed Mosque.

“This is the culture of the Netherlands,” he said. “They want to have results. And when they see you’re a good person, and a Muslim or Arab, their minds can change.

“You’ll never hear me say the Netherlands is bad for Muslims,” he continued. “We have freedom to practise our religion. Muslims can get an education and have good jobs.

“When we talk about my generation especially, it’s very integrated.”

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